'Early Man' School Visits

Campbeltown Museum welcomes engagement from primary and secondary schools, which are led and facilitated by Heritage Learning and Access Assistant Khara MacPhail. Read below to see how Khara arranges and creates the museum’s outreach programme.

During the Easter break, a Dalintober Primary School teacher visited and inquired about a potential visit with her primary two class in the upcoming term. I sent her away with contact details and some suggestions of activities that the museum could prepare. 

Following the email, I got to work prepping materials that not only provided the children with an out-of-class experience in a heritage venue but one that was free and accessible to all students and their learning needs—as well as linking activities to the learning/curriculum requirements.

The group was lucky to have a beautiful, sunny day that allowed for one of the activities to be completed outdoors in the Linda McCartney Memorial Garden.  This activity required the children to draw a picture on a piece of slate of something important to them that they might want historians to know about in the future. Alternatively, the students were to put themselves in the shoes of a Neolithic person and create a stone age-inspired design.  The finished products were then sprayed with hairspray to set the designs. 

The children also explored the museum's neolithic displays. It was lovely to see the fascinated expressions of those who have never visited before alongside the children who have.  While inside, I led a match-up activity where children had to act like the historian, allowing them to take control of their learning in a fun, interactive way. The children look at and identify printed images of items from the Stone Age, buildings, and clothing. We then discussed these items in terms of what they were made of, who would have used them, what they were used for, and any thinking of any similar modern objects.